Category: News

Rikki Pollard, a divorce lawyer for the down and out in gritty Buffalo, NY, makes a living out of rendering asunder what the Lord had brought together. Despite her unholy trade, Rikki never expected to encounter Old Scratch himself in open court.

But now she has to rescue her young client, Chance Stone, from a fate worse than death. It’s Rikki vs. damnation in a courtroom custody case like no other. To save Chance, she will have to outwit the devil himself, with only a little voodoo-related backup. A supernatural courtroom adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

This story is part of the latest volume of the Uncollected Anthology — Fabulous Familiars!

This is a spooky time of year, and this theme is perfect for the season: magicals and the familiars who enhance them. Our guest author this issue is the wonderful Valerie Brook. I hope you enjoy every story in the volume — check them all out!

“Hedging the Witch”

An honest politician: far more rare than hedgewitches, at least in Portland, Oregon.

When one such politician asks hedgewitches Holly and Willow to investigate whether his rival employs a magical advantage, Holly’s familiar, Cam, must support Holly through a treacherous investigation…or risk losing her forever.

The first story in a spellbinding new urban fantasy series by the author of the Nikki Ashburne Ghosted stories.

Eed graduates from an insect familiar to a raven familiar, but his first pairing with a pushy warlock ends in disaster. Eed barely escapes before the warlock enslaves him, breaking the rule of cooperation between witch and familiar.

But when Eed tries to return to the raven clan, he finds himself blacklisted. Facing enslavement to the warlock or getting busted back to insect, Eed turns rogue.

Magnificent Maggie Fontaine has been around the mysteries of magic all her life. But when she wakes up with an underage hangover and a talking press-on priestess tattoo on her arm, all Mag wants is for both things to go away. When Aunt Fabulous turns out to have vanished overnight, and it’s up to Mag to find her guardian, will the strange talking tattoo be a help or a hindrance?

Happy new year! I have deadlines like whoa but wanted to wish you a good January full of delicious developments.

These little lovelies grew on my kitchen counter (by design, you jokers. I swear I maintain good housekeeping practices! We wanted these fungi to grow where they grew). This was a box garden we found at Home Depot of all places…careful watering led to a crop of the most delicious fresh oyster mushrooms anybody ever ate. We harvested these with a pair of kitchen shears, and I sauteed them in olive oil, with just a little salt for seasoning.

WOW. Taste explosion. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a single serving of something insanely delicious than a whole bag of something meh that leaves you feeling yucky afterwards (yeah Doritos, I’m talking about you…). I served the sauteed mushrooms alongside a steak, and it was perfect. Ahh.

If you want to hunt these down for yourself, check it out! Have a wonderful week :)

I have deadlines out the wazoo, so this week instead of deep thoughts on cooking I share with you my kitchen heroine. The person who is most responsible for giving me the tools to actually cook edible food.

Yep. Julia.

It’s not because I watched her in my impressionable childhood (I remember watching her massacre French bread once while home sick with a fever and I was sure I was hallucinating). Or because she was such a formidable French chef.

It’s because Julia Child had so much fun in the kitchen and cared about doing it right. I was somebody who was too scared to even enter the kitchen with culinary intent, and Julia gave me a road map to making hearty, good food.

My well-worn cooking Bible…

For a meditation on what cooking means, and how the celebrity of cooking has changed our perceptions of the kitchen, check out this long and thoughtful essay in the New York Times by Michael Pollan. He describes the singular appeal of Julia Child’s perspective on home cooking, for women who were looking for meaning in and out of the kitchen:

“It was a gratifying, even ennobling sort of work, engaging both the mind and the muscles. You didn’t do it to please a husband or impress guests; you did it to please yourself. No one cooking on television today gives the impression that they enjoy the actual work quite as much as Julia Child did. In this, she strikes me as a more liberated figure than many of the women who have followed her on television.”

Today I cooked lamb chops for the guys, using the recipe in this loved-to-death cookbook, and I thought I’d recommend it to you if you are still learning techniques. As she says, a roast is a roast, and a saute is a saute. Once you’ve got the hang of a technique and make it yours, you’ve expanded your cooking repetoire forever.

So if you too are still a student of the kitchen, I strongly recommend you start here, with this masterwork of Julia Child: The Way To Cook. Bon appetit :)